reflections

I was quite eager to do a “2007 versus 2017” series post and I had the fun surprise of looking back into my old journal entries only to discover I didn’t write a single post in June 2007!

I will give you a comparable 2007 versus 2017 substitute.

I have a good entry from May 2007 about my feelings regarding leaving the Marine Corps. The timing works well because I started my new position in higher education. I still work serving a military affiliated student population but I made the dramatic shift from being student facing to a non student facing opportunity. Last week was my first week in my new role and I am just floored by the welcoming company culture. As a veteran, I do find I get somewhat skittish that I’ll be judged for my visible tattoo (although I frequently wear long sleeves since office environments tend to be colder than I like), my preference for ponytails versus fully done up hair, and my sporadic use of makeup.

Society judges women heavily and it hasn’t seemed to matter at what age or in what industry. The rules are written and unwritten. The looks for stepping outside those “norms” feel the same. Any time I’ve changed my working environment I question what will my peer treatment look like, what will my supervisor’s rules look like, and what infringement will the company place on my personal expression. My desire to be more myself was a key part of leaving the Marine Corps. Over the years, I’ve come to see pushing and prodding to adhere to desired female beauty standards and thankfully last week I was rewarded by the visual confirmation my new company permits a lot of personal expression. Some female peers have full sleeve tattoos, others enjoy wearing shorts and jeans (as permitted by their departments), and makeup is worn from the slight touch of lip color and mascara to a fully done face with false lashes.

I feel more at home than I expected I would as a new employee. I am quite happy and I feel once I get the hang of my work responsibilities this happiness will only magnify. I don’t feel like the lost person I felt I was in May 2007.

Below is one of two entries I wrote for May 23, 2007. I am not sharing the earlier one as I included some personally identifying information for family friends and I don’t want to worry about anyone having that person’s address. (By the way, anyone who knows how I feel about fireworks might laugh that back then I still thought I’d enjoy them!)

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Last week, I heard back from the VA. Yet again, they don’t consider my chest pains to be service-connected. This reality kind of floored me. I actually opened up to them in my December 2016 claim and while it might sound silly to say such a thing, in 2007, I kept things simple.

I didn’t tell them about Captain Brock dying. I didn’t tell them about my kind of work. I didn’t emphasize my exposure to mortars, although that information was part of what I listed in my records about different types of exposures while in the Marine Corps. Back then, I was dealing with chest pains and I knew I didn’t have them before I served. They started at the tail end of my first deployment, continued after I returned, and remained a part of my life through separation. I just needed the VA to understand at my point of separation the chest pains were still ongoing and I felt they were related to my service in Iraq in OIF 2-2.

If I had realized what a miserable experience it is dealing with the VA on the disability compensation side of the house, I think I would have pushed harder to find the right medical support while I was in. For the few times I was willing to subject myself to medical about this condition, every person wrote ‘non cardiac origin’ for the pains but no one wrote in a diagnosis or suggested getting additional feedback on my situation. What’s more infuriating is the parts where it reads ‘exercise induced stitch.’ Seriously, in the twelve years I’ve dealt with these pains only the primary care provider I’ve dealt with most recently has delved further into this issue and offered different suggestions because the pains were getting to the point they were destroying my quality of life during waking hours and would interrupt my sleep.

For over a year now I’ve wanted to have a conversation with you all about the Pre-and Post-Deployment Health Assessments and I think with this other VA encounter, I have the right foundation for this discussion.

The VA does not know our deployments the way we do and part of the problem is also the way the system requires ticking off boxes, ineffectually asking and not asking the right questions. The forms we complete do not necessarily represent the types of situations we may encounter; let’s be honest here, the VA will never have records from the Marine Corps and/or the US government that 175 United States service members died during my deployment and these numbers best represent the information I was feed every day as part of my work in our operations center. I only know this information because I was determined to find a way to discuss my deployment, to shed light on other aspects of war no one seems to look closely at but is an important job all the same. I am only privileged to know this much of the extent of my deployment thanks to Military Times data.

In cases like mine my work was classified secret so how was I suppose to honestly fill out the forms? As well, even if I could be honest, there also is not a sense of privacy to complete the forms properly not that I would have trusted completely it in full disclosure. On my first deployment, I was the only woman on my team so I felt implied pressure to not be the “weak link” and during the second deployment a lot of stress from the first deployment crept up that I was not willing to discuss with my command. Nor was my situation helped by the fact my chest pains occurred on deployment and yet again, no real resolution came out of getting them checked out.

My apologies I currently do not have snapshots of my first deployment paperwork. eBenefits is being quite a disappointment and again not allowing me access to my military records. The next time it’s available, I’ll try to download all my copies so I can share those details with you. For now though, we can press forward using information from my second deployment documentation, the pre-and post-deployment health assessments.

This form was filled out on July 11, 2006It’s kind of funny I still had my maiden name on my pre-deployment health assessment. I was already married by then.

I’ve cut off segments of the documentation as my copies contain my Social Security Number but for greater clarity on this issue, below are fuller snapshots of the pre-deployment health assessment form that existed during my period of service.

Below is the updated version of the Pre-Deployment Health Assessment Form:

The revamp of the Post-Deployment Health Assessment is also of great concern to me, and I think all veterans of this era should consider how the inadequacies of the earlier form shape what sort of service/deployment experience is considered valuable, dangerous, and potentially traumatic. The forum in which service members were offered to complete their forms is equally as important. I can remember completing the first form in a classroom with a number of guys, classroom style as though we were taking an examination for a grade. It was really a matter of “everyone’s got to do it”. You fill out your form by hand and turn it back in. You don’t want to get called out for your answers and you just want to make it back home.

I don’t recall completing the Post-Deployment Health Assessment at the end of my second deployment but most of the handwriting is distinctly mine; there are only a few segments where the medical personnel filled in information. Coming home was very rushed that time. I can remember meeting my husband and his mother and sister at the Sheridan, Wyoming airport but I cannot remember who picked me up in California. I remember having issues with my military gear being stuck on the conveyer belt and an older gentlemen picking up my pack like it was nothing, hoisting it up so I could tuck my arms into the shoulder pads and settle it on my back. (To everyone who was part of my transition home, I do not make this statement about not remembering your support lightly. Coming home was that much of a blur. I didn’t have a moment to catch my breath and will still say that process didn’t start until I left 3rd MAW in late May 2007 for terminal leave.)

My chest pains are the only thing I shared with the VA as a serious issue in 2007 and again, I am making the choice to share so much personal information because I don’t necessarily see our system getting better if there is a significant gap between what people expect their service to be like and the reality of the experience. I hope by cracking open an issue like poorly constructed pre-and post-deployment health assessments provides a lenses for organizations like the VA to understand where they must also take a step back and learn from veterans what deployments are like. I also hope current service members look at their needs before the needs of the organization they serve; at some point, we all leave the service and our personal health cannot take a back seat because we didn’t want to look like malingers/didn’t want to lose camaraderie/didn’t want to let down the team when a medical issue should have prevented us from deploying.

When I also decided to share with the VA this go around the fact I’ve dealt with tinnitus in the last few years and for a shorter duration, moments of hearing loss, I expected to have them listen. I thought it was fairly reasonable to be ‘heard’ since I have recorded mortar exposure in my records but never sought treatment because I didn’t notice anything wrong at the time.

Right now my hearing is not to the point where I’ve lost full functionality and I sincerely hope it doesn’t degrade further but the hearing loss does scare me. (The tinnitus, on the other, is mostly annoying and only occasionally causes pain.) These issues make me realize I cannot continue to take my hearing for granted and I should plan more for down the road if it degrades to the point where hearing aids might be needed. For now though, I am pretty good about asking people to repeat themselves when I need them to and I remind my daughter to come into the same room if she wants to talk to me. (She tries to yell from upstairs but I’m going to miss a lot of what she’s jabbering about so I make her come down and talk to me anyways.)

I am already past my bedtime (Seriously, it’s 10:45 pm!!!) but in closing, take a moment to look at the October 2015 form. It is much more inclusive. (Please excuse the fact I cannot obtain a good snapshot that shows on each page the form is not to be handwritten.)

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Yesterday, I volunteered with a handful of other veterans to be part of a local community collaboration sharing our stories interwoven with pieces of The Odyssey for Odyssey Home: A Veteran Performance. The Chandler Public Library held this event called Creating Peace From Conflict at the Chandler Center For the Arts in partnership with Arizona State University and Veterans For Peace. We also had Veteran Vision Project photos on site for attendance goers to see along with the individual narratives associated with each photograph. Once the footage is available, I’ll provide the link.

This collaboration starting off with group drumming and continued with our storytelling mixed with selections from The Odyssey. A few musical pieces were played by Guitars for Vets and another veteran, Ahmad Daniels was there as a representative for Veterans For Peace, also sharing his story. I know the event was scheduled to conclude with audience engagement, sort of a Q&A opportunity. I only stayed for the Odyssey performance as I had another engagement in the afternoon and with today being my daughter’s birthday, I wanted to make headway Saturday on some other issues I’ve currently slacked on.

The theme of the performance was homecoming and I am quite thankful the event started with the group drumming. While I did not choose to drum (I am embarrassed by my lack of rhythm) the sounds that filled the room reminded me of the wonderful performance given by citizens of Sao Vicente when I visited Cape Verde in high school. My peers, teachers, and I landed to a beautiful musical performance at the airport that reminds me still music is a thread shared globally; we may not always understand each other’s words and actions but music binds us in such a spiritual way.

I loved being reminded of a place that was my home for a short period of my life. Three weeks may not be an eternity but it’s sufficient time to be welcomed as a stranger, treated like a daughter, and remembered as a friend. I am forever grateful for that experience and everyone who welcomed us into their country, their homes, and let us savor their culture that we might never have experienced in our lives had our paths not crossed.

The airport in Sao Vicente

I think I was better able to embrace my role as a participant yesterday feeling like I was welcomed to this group much like how I was welcomed into Cape Verdean life.

My cohort of veterans included an ASU professor, my close friend and fellow ASU student, and a future student. For our individual tales, we provided the audience a better glimpse of ‘homecoming’ as experiences shaped by individual perception and built a bridge that homecoming is not exactly a single finite moment in time, but a process. I focused on the more immediate aspects of coming home to family tragedies and feeling like I did not fit into my life stateside.

I think a vital part of the construction of this storytelling was how well Robin Rio and her students shaped the music performance. I met Robin back in the fall of 2014 when I started my graduate degree at ASU. She is an Associate Professor with the School of Music and the Director of ASU’s Music Therapy Clinic. I interviewed her to gain a better understanding of ASU’s chapter of Guitars for Vets.

Looking back, I did not ask great interview questions, but I think we all have moments like that in our lives where our place as students does not necessarily provide us a sufficient lenses to see and understand the larger context of our community because we are also shortsighted about more immediate concerns like passing a class, juggling work, and testing our fit with fellow students. Seeing Guitars for Vets on campus though did inspire me to get out of my comfort zone about trying a musical instrument. I purchased a Taylor guitar awhile back and now, with my reduced commute, can commit more to my goal of learning the acoustic guitar. (Maybe I’ll be able to play a song before the year ends!)

This talented bunch just wow me; there’s so much musical talent in this group. I cannot wait to share the performance so you can understand how beautifully they play.

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Good afternoon, everyone. The video for the Chandler Public Library’s America in Times of Conflict: She Went to War panel I served on March 11th is now posted. I consider myself still somewhat of a beginner when it comes to public speaking and as such, have not watched the video yet. I think if I do and see how nervous I was, I might not be willing to share it with you all today. (I love written storytelling but I am dipping my toe into the territory of oral histories.)

I agreed to be a panelist to show support for my dear friend, Nancy Dallett. She is the Assistant Director of the Office of Veteran and Military Academic Engagement at Arizona State University and she is quite passionate about oral histories. She knew a past misstep with another oral history project left me somewhat reluctant to take on another but the way this project was shaped is what changed my opinion on the matter. What I do like about a panel is the interpretative distance the moderator plays with the panelists. She directs the conversation and keeps it in check, but her influence on what is stated via certain questions is tempered by the panelists.

I am quite proud of the types of questions asked of my fellow panelists and I. Often times, I feel it is hard for us as women to be asked truly valuable questions outside the context of victimization. I get stuck with questions that tiptoe around or center on the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault within the military service branches and while I think it is important not to minimize those social problems, I think it is quite valuable our society continues to also see the professional opportunities for women in military service and the opportunities they can have post-servicing to enhance their lives and their family legacies. Situations like the recent nude photo sharing being discussed in the news can impact the willingness of women to join and/or to have their families’ support when considering service in one of our military branches. (The ‘Marines United’ nude photo sharing scandal came up as one of the questions asked by our audience.) As a female veteran, I want people who hear and participate in these conversations to understand any person (man, woman, or child) can be victimized at any point in his or her lifetime; it is more imperative we look for ways to make our society safer through education and awareness for everyone, not just groups of people or individual persons, and to instill appropriate punishments on the perpetrators so as to give the best measure of justice to the victim(s) of heinous deviant acts like this photo scandal.

Again, I want to reiterate the questions asked were quite considerate so as to not give you the wrong impression the panel was skewed far to the victimization spectrum of women’s issues. General themes included our motivations for service, expectations of what Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam were prior to serving overseas, the reality of our living/working situations abroad, and concern over whether we thought our service had a positive impact in our lives.

Fair warning, the video is lengthy. At almost two hours, you might want to set aside time to listen to it in its entirety or skip around for shorter conversations. My daughter asked a question of me near the tail end of the audience Q& A section (proud Momma moment here!) so I hope you her piece of the presentation. I didn’t expect she would actually have something to ask although she did ask before the panel began if it was necessary.

Take care and enjoy.

(If you have any tips on how to improve my presence as a panelist, I’d love to hear back from you.)

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Hello, everyone. I know New Year’s treated you well. I spent my three-day weekend at home and enjoyed a slight decrease (much to my appreciation) in fireworks exposure. My new neighbors don’t seem to go quite as crazy as the ones I had in the Willows neighborhood in Gilbert. If you like fireworks, you might enjoy a stroll through this neighborhood on the 4th of July or New Year’s Eve; I anticipate in a neighborhood of 586 houses so long as the Town of Gilbert permits fireworks, people will set up small fireworks shows just outside their front doors. For today though, I’ll like to start my first 2007 versus 2017 post.

2007 was important for me because I completed my active duty service with the Marine Corps and started to explore what life beyond the Corps would look and feel like, my taste of adult freedom if you will. I won’t say I made smart money moves back then so as we begin this new journey looking back and discussing my future in 2017, please know I will likely discuss money a lot. My financial needs were met very well on active duty; Thomas and I did not have any kids while I was serving and we both collected a housing allowance. Since we both served, we received one full housing allowance and the other received a partial housing allowance. I do apologize that I do not recall the actual monetary amounts because I understand this knowledge aids our conversation greatly. All too often, a young service member will complain about not having sufficient pay for food, housing, etc. but for our household size and relative expenses, we always came out ahead even after I separated until we moved to Wyoming in 2009. Stories for another day I know, but the short version is that many of our expenses, fixed and variable, remained the same and our housing allowance decreased significantly.

In 2007, I had some lofty wedding reception ambitions, as you can see from my journal entry below. While we never ended up having our wedding reception the reality is I spent a significant amount of time planning for a costly one-day event. On the skinny spending side, I think we were looking at $8,000 to $10,000 for the venue, a photographer, hotel rooms, travel, food, etc. The dream was dropped before anything was booked but not until after I purchased my wedding gown (we got married through the Justice of the Peace in 2006) and picked up some small wedding related items.

My desire to control my personal finances did not truly begin until we moved to Wyoming. Our crash course in the broke life lead us to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Being introduced to Dave Ramsey’s program through friends and their church, we made headway towards undoing the financial damage. It’s not fun, but without the substantial housing allowance we received in California, we had to take a serious look at our finances. Throughout the years, we’ve still struggled to stay on the Dave Ramsey path so I still refer back to the books and resources. My in-laws also added more Dave Ramsey resources to our collection. Additionally, I kept my Financial Planning notebook from my undergraduate studies because I want to ensure I update our financial goals (i.e. retirement planning, life insurance planning, etc.) as our family needs change over time.

With my husband still in school, 2017 does not wear the carefree face our lives did in 2007. We just don’t have that same amount of money to play with on a daily basis. Thankfully, he has one semester of Post-9/11 GI Bill® benefits to help cover expenses this semester but law school is one of those endeavors where we are bringing student loan debt into our lives. This decision obviously strays from Dave Ramsey’s teachings. We take steps towards self-improvement and I would prefer to not be shamed for student loan debt; I do not make enough money to fully fund law school. We considered ASU’s Employee Reduced Tuition but the reality is 100% of that tuition reduction is taxed for graduate programs and I am already working on a tight single income, the last thing I need is more money taken out of my paycheck at this time. Now that we have a more transparent conversation (thanks for not judging me or keeping your opinion to yourself) I would like to share personal goals for the year.

My goals are broadly categorized under personal achievements, family activities, and home improvement. Financial planning is important to each one of these endeavors. I am in a place to either spend money for the results or I am saving money to complete the goal. Although I am not outlining these as SMART (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-based) for your respective purposes as the reader, these qualities are important whenever you desire to see a goal through completion and I’m keeping these factors in mind for each goal.

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I know it’s not normal for you to get an updated post from me this time of time but I am at home with my sick daughter and now that I’ve sent her off for an afternoon nap, it’s time for me to enjoy some “me time” which translates to writing. It may not be what I do best [yet in my life] but it’s one of the best things I enjoy.

When I started this blog back in 2014, I mentioned something that probably did not come off as an intimate detail in my life. I mentioned how, back in 2004, one of the Corporals at my unit told me not to write a book about Iraq. Now, as a thirty-two year old, I cringe more when I think of that asinine statement. There is not a single soul in this world that deserves to tell me what to do with my life.

I think war narratives are important, even if I haven’t liked all the ones I’ve read. The point is not to get rich. The point is not to be famous. The point is to convey a slice of history that can be lost otherwise. The point is to capture sights, sounds, people, and places that are changed in the moment and hopefully influence people to take a more nuanced approach to understanding war.

As impossible as it is to whittle down what I learned in graduate school, one of the best lessons I came away with is uncovering the extent of how society ignores, belittles, and underreports the achievements and lived experiences of women. We are not shadows of living beings; we are living, too. I say society in this reference in speaking specifically to American society however there are many teachings that shows us women compared to men are often given less notice.

I write to you all today to tell you I will write my book. I will write it regardless of whether it gets published. I will write it because there will never be another moment in time that mirrors this experience. I will write it because there are numerous others who could gain something from this type of storytelling. I will write because a song I heard recently made me think of this experience and the amount of emotional connection I have to that point in my life.

I will not forgo a personal achievement because another human being has such set opinions against writing war memoirs.

If you’re wondering about that song, below are the lyrics:

“Every Little Thing” (Sung by Carly Pearce)

The scent that you left on my pillow
The sound of your heart beating with mine
The look in your eyes like a window
The taste of your kiss soaked in wine

Every little thing
I remember every little thing
The high, the hurt, the shine, the sting
Of every little thing

Guess you forgot what you told me
Because you left my heart on the floor
Baby, your ghost still haunts me
But I don’t want to sleep with him no more

Every little thing
I remember every little thing
The high, the hurt, the shine, the sting
Of every little thing
I remember every little thing
The high, the hurt, the shine, the sting
Of every little thing

They say time is the only healer
God, I hope that isn’t right
Cause right now I’d die to not remember

Every little thing
I remember every little thing
The high, the hurt, the shine, the sting
Every little thing
I remember every little thing
I’m haunted by the memories of
Every little thing
The high, the hurt, the shine, the sting
Every little thing

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One of the photographs that served as an original inspiration for my tattoo

The day has come…I am very proud to reveal to you all my tattoo. This personal journey was worth the wait and more importantly, the money. Tattooing is not a cheap gift to one’s self. I am very thankful Justin Nordine from The Raw Canvas in Grand Junction, Colorado is only a short flight away because I absolutely love his style and know already that I will be commissioning another piece with him down the road.

When I initially provided a deposit, I had in mind a negative space tattoo which in some way incorporated ‘freedom’ written in Arabic. I knew with my year timeframe to fruition I could hone the desired result and certainly events over the past year changed my opinion about how I saw this piece and how I saw my body. There’s a lot to say about my experiences during OIF 2-2 and because I am no longer in the Marine Corps, I am not limited to placement or size of a tattoo to stay within regulations. I did not know when this journey started what the finished product would look like although I did know I was finally ready to commemorate my military service.

The images I provided Justin as we got closer to my appointment included:

A photograph of the Euphrates River (to emphasis an important blue to include in the color work);

A photograph of the 1st Marine Division logo (again to emphasis an important blue);

A door located on Camp Blue Diamond (for the scrollwork);

A photograph of Peruvian lilies (the meaning of these flowers are friendship and devotion); and

I discussed the dual names attributed to the second assault into Fallujah (in lieu of an additional photograph).

I didn’t realize how much I was asking of Justin when I provided these images but during our phone consultation we touched base on making a new memory. He reminded me I am commissioning a piece of art. I had been putting so much pressure on finding the right way to speak to the complicated nature of the deployment and he reminded me quite gently that I knew what the tattoo meant and if a concrete representation was important that he might not be the artist for me. I think his willingness to have this conversation so I was happy with the final product is very important and because his talent truly speaks for itself I made the decision the tattoo did not need to convey all these things. This opportunity was the first time I allowed someone so much control over something I would carry with me for the rest of my life and I am happy with this adventure.

After providing additional images to Justin for review, I waited until our meeting to see his creation. Originally, we discussed doing an upper arm piece and he crafted a sprig of black sketched lilies capped by a geometric pointillism design which pays tribute to my appreciation for Islamic architecture. Behind the flowers, a beautiful wash of colors included green, blue, rose pink, and orange. The orange, by far, is the color that fascinated me the most. It was so unexpected. Since he had layered images of the sketched flowers and the pointillism separately I was able to see how the design could be easily altered to fit my forearm which didn’t need a cap like the shoulder.

I do have a tendency to carry extra weight in my upper arms (which I never noticed until I was pregnant with my daughter!) and was a bit worried if I don’t always maintain my upper body physical fitness consistently, my tattoo might not look the way I want it to look over time. However, my forearms always look pretty nice even if I don’t hit up the gym regularly and I was very happy to see how the flowers complimented my body structure. He was right that by having the piece of my upper arm I could control who saw it but by having it on my forearm it is available for public display; this decision is not a light one to make depending on who you are and the industry you work in or may choose to consider for professional opportunities. For me, I am past that stage in my life. I wanted my tattoo to be a highly visible work of art I see and share daily with others.

My journey is unique and I am grateful for Justin’s ability to give me a beautiful way to honor that experience.